


Punch-Drunk, Seeing Stars

by thought



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Gen, Genderfluid Loki (Marvel), that alternate timeline you know the one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-23
Updated: 2019-05-23
Packaged: 2020-03-10 01:17:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18928375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thought/pseuds/thought
Summary: "Wait," Verity says, "you're telling us you just happened to bump into a genocidal alien super-being on your way to Starbucks?"





	Punch-Drunk, Seeing Stars

**Author's Note:**

> This week, in unapologetically writing self-indulgent fic 2K19:  
> What if, between falling from the Bifrost and meeting Thanos, Loki had spent a few months on Earth being an angsty resentful disaster and making friends? In the Endgame timeline where Loki escapes with the Tesseract, he has people willing to help out. Or at least not kill him on sight.

"Good morning, Victor," Loki says, brightly. Victor von Doom sits up in bed so fast he feels something twist sharply in his shoulder that will probably need to be inconveniently iced later.

"I have proximity alarms for a reason," he says, not bothering with subtlety as he activates the intruder lockdown system from the tiny control pad on the metal cuff he wears around his wrist.

"It's hardly my fault if your technology is sub-par. I was also able to get into Stark Tower, if that helps."

"It doesn't," Victor snaps. "What's wrong with your eyes?"

"He's actually rather charming, if you like that sort of thing." Loki is perched on top of the wardrobe like a cat, knees folded up against his chest, hair hanging lank and filthy over his face. His eyes are an unnatural icy blue, and there's blood and dirt crusted over his clothing and exposed skin.

"What were you aiming to achieve, precisely?" Victor says, settling his mask in place. He doesn't like the way Loki's smiling, or the rapid jittering of his knee, the faint rattle of his boot heel against the polished wood. "Besides significant property damage and embarrassing yourself in international news media."

"I am burdened with glorious purpose," Loki says, like it's an explanation.

"I'm sure," Victor says, dryly. "Where have you been for the past eight months? Surely the Starbucks queue wasn't that bad."

Loki stares, then laughs like shattering glass. "Careful, it almost sounds as if you care."

"I like to know where you are, as a general rule," Victor says, walking towards the door.

"Mmhm," says Loki. "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer and your pet gods in your bed, is that it?"

"Or on my dissection table," Victor says, irritably. He has little patience for Loki's dramatics on a good day.

"Never mind that," Loki says. "I've brought you a gift. To apologize for my unscheduled absence."

"I'll decide how to react once I know what it is," Victor says. Loki appears in front of him, walking backwards down the corridor. "Also, you should call your American friend."

"You just want someone else to yell at me first so it doesn't seem like an over-reaction when you do it," Loki accuses him, which is perhaps too accurate for Victor's dignity.

"What is this gift, then?" he asks. "Request for asylum? Latveria doesn't have an extradition treaty with the States but perhaps I ought to send you back anyway."

Loki pouts. "Would I use you like that?"

"Yes," Victor says, "though it would hurt your pride terribly to gain assistance from a Midgardian ruler, even passively."

"Ha! If I were in want of a patron I would have allowed Stark to charm me."

Loki's deliberately bating him, and Victor can't tell why. It's unsettling and annoying in equal measure.

"Eventually you will have to answer one of my questions," Victor points out, because he's starting to feel like a demanding child and if anyone is the immature one in this relationship it certainly isn't Victor.

"There are many things I have to do," Loki says. “Satisfying your banal curiosity isn't one of them."

Victor is silent until they reach his laboratory. "I've upgraded my security," he says. "I don't suppose you'll do me the courtesy of looking away while I take down the wards."

Loki smiles patronizingly. "You've become arrogant in my absence. It's a good thing I’m here to keep your ego in check." And with that, he vanishes and appears in the lab, waving at Victor through the transparent steel window. Victor huffs in amusement and activates the magic-nullifying field he's been designing since the first moment he met Loki. There's a silent shockwave, his ears pop painfully, all the air is suddenly simply gone from his lungs and he spends a few disconcerting seconds gasping frantically. Loki has crumpled to the floor like discarded spare parts, but when Victor enters the lab Loki looks up at him, eyes back to their usual emerald green, and smiles bright and vicious. There is blood on his teeth. This is not the reaction Victor was expecting.

"Victor," he says, almost affectionate. "You're exactly as predictable as I hoped."

Victor glares down at him. "By which you mean exactly as intelligent."

'Paranoid. Clever, too, yes. It's not just anyone who can so effectively render my magic useless.'

"Yet not, I suspect, as short a list as I, or you, would like. Will this be noticed?"

Loki pushes himself up on his elbows. "Perhaps, but I'm no longer of any great importance. He doesn't know I still have the Tesseract."

"I have a great many questions," Victor says.

Loki sighs loudly. "Might they wait until I've had an opportunity to rest? Eat, perhaps? Maybe even bathe. The simple pleasures in life tend to fall by the wayside when one has been tortured and without one's own will for months."

“Not entirely mind-control, then, but something like it," Victor says, thoughtfully, ignoring the torture comment for the moment.

"I respect your ravenous appetite for knowledge, I truly do, but at the moment I respect your hot water and functional plumbing even more."

"Allowing you your magic won't put you back under the sway of your unwanted masters?"

"Of course not," Loki says, scornfully. "You've quite effectively disconnected me entirely from any energies that can conduct seidr, be it my own or anyone else's. And without direct application of the Mind Stone, there's no way that he can get into my head."

The Mind Stone. Well. What an underwhelmingly vague title for something that can render a demigod helpless. Victor studies him for another moment, then deactivates the device. Loki sucks in a quick breath, then sits up fully, looking directly up at Victor.

"Still green," Victor says, as reassuringly as he can manage given his current frustration levels with Loki's evasiveness.

"I told you," Loki says, but it's clear he's relieved.

"You may have six hours," Victor says, generously. "I won't risk any further delay."

"As I said, he won't bother with me anymore," Loki says. "And it isn't as if anyone on Midgard could track me here."

"Hmm," says Victor. "You're still going to tell me what that gift is."

Loki flutters his eyelashes. "Is my presence not gift enough?"

Victor folds his hands behind his back so he doesn't give in to his desire to strike Loki. "That pun only works if you're speaking English," he says. "The Allspeak has a hard enough time with wordplay, and I'm not even hearing the proper language to appreciate it."

"Thank you very much for the linguistics lesson," Loki snipes. All the dangerous, frenetic energy had faded away with the blue in his eyes, and Victor's almost certain he's remained on the floor because he doesn't trust his body to support him standing.

"Go, then," Victor says, and turns away to give Loki the illusion of privacy. When he turns back, Loki has vanished, but there's a glowing blue cube sitting, innocuously, on the floor in his place. Victor takes a step back, but he's already reaching for a tablet to begin scanning.

*

Verity is woken up by her phone vibrating on the pillow beside her head. She's one of about a hundred displaced Manhattanites sleeping in this church, curled up on a squishy blue mat that's been giving her weird flashbacks to grade-school gym class. The church's Wi-Fi is still operational, so she'd been able to let her mom know she's ok, but getting out of the city is an impossibility and the cell networks are all still either down or overloaded. By this logic, there's no way her phone should be ringing.

According to her phone she's only been asleep for an hour, and there are still plenty of people awake and talking around her, so she doesn't feel guilty answering the call.

"Hello?"

"Don't yell at me," a familiar voice says on the other end of the line. At least this explains how she's getting a phone call.

"What the actual fuck?" she says, calmly.

"I know," Loki says.

"My apartment building is *gone*," Verity says. "If I were at home, I would be dead right now. Instead I'm just homeless and bruised and metaphorically rage screaming into the void; do you know how many lies people tell during a crisis?"

Loki is silent for a moment. "I'm sorry," she says, finally. She's not lying, but that's not exactly any comfort. "Listen, there is an explanation, but I don't know if it's safe--"

"Where are you?" she demands.

"Latveria." Verity bristles, but she suppresses any hurt feelings.

"Ok, logical. No extradition treaties, right?"

"Why is that the first thing everyone thinks of? If you must know, I needed Victor's help."

"In your plans for world domination?" Verity asks, meanly.

"You know I didn't actually want that."

"Firstly, no I do not know that," Verity says, and then frowns at her phone. "No, hang on, say that again. Be specific."

"At the time, I did desire that the invasion succeed," Loki says, immediately. "That being said, that was not my goal."

All true. "You have so much explaining to do, asshole," Verity says. "Not to mention, you've been gone for months." She's not going to say she was worried, because she's not sure she deserves her concern and also she'd seen him on the news, all armour and leather and stupid helmet and there had been something fundamentally, startlingly alien about him in a way she'd never noticed before.

"How do you feel about a vacation in Latveria?" Loki asks. "Explaining all of this is going to be embarrassing and will likely take rather a long time."

"I feel terrible about it," she says, "I'm kind of attached to little things like democracy and decent red wine. I can't even get out of New York, let alone off the continent."

"I'll come get you, obviously," Loki says, impatiently. "Are you alone?"

"No," she says, sharply. "Hang on. If I get arrested for aiding and abetting, I'm going to have coffee with your brother."

"If it helps, the world's going to end in a few years, anyway," Loki says, cheerfully.

Truth.

"It does not help," Verity says.

*

Loki leaves Victor in the lab with the Tesseract and teleports himself to his room. It's just as he'd left it, which either speaks to Victor's sentimentality or his disregard of matters he sees as trivial. It isn't as if there's a lack of rooms. He removes his armour and then almost falls asleep in the bath. He has healed his superficial injuries, but what remains will have to wait until his magic has had the chance to replenish itself and he is in a better headspace. The last thing he needs is to tear his insides apart by accident. Probably.

Despite the exhaustion, she only manages three hours of sleep before the nightmares drive her into wakefulness, which is a delightful side-effect of the last few months that she really should have expected. She wanders the castle until she comes upon staff to prepare her a meal, and sits outside on the top of one of the courtyard walls while she waits. Morning twilight is just creeping across the sky, heavy rainclouds sweeping in from the west to stifle it. It would really be ideal if Thor were the god of something slightly less ubiquitous than the weather itself. She does not need an emotional crisis every time it rains.

She calls Verity both because it is the polite thing to do and also because she would really like not to think about Thor at the moment. Or ever, actually. The conversation goes better than she's expecting. Everything has gone better than she expects it to, aside from the part where the mindless green beast had snapped most of her ribs and redesigned Stark's living room.

After she eats she texts Verity to make sure she's somewhere private, then transports herself back to New York. She stumbles when she arrives, jars something in her spine that she suspects oughtn’t to be able to jar, clenches her teeth so hard it rekindles the headache she'd just managed to sleep off.

"You look like shit," Verity says, unsympathetically. They're in an empty room, rows of tiny desks and orange plastic chairs taking up most of the space. Verity is leaning against a wall covered in bright childish drawings.

"I'd imagine I look how I feel," Loki says.

"Are you going to pass out if you teleport us back right away?"

"Absolutely not," Loki says, indignant, and grabs Verity's hand before she can cast any more aspersions, stepping through a crook in the branches of the universe and coming out back in Victor's castle.

"Good job," Verity says, dryly.

"Thank you," Loki says.

"Ahh," Victor says, skidding into the doorway. "You haven’t been kidnapped, then."

“Of course not," Loki says.

"You're just hitting it out of the park today," Verity says. "Conscious and un-kidnapped, I'm impressed."

"She did rather fail at world domination, earlier," Victor points out. "I assume you've brought Ms. Willis here so you don't have to explain twice."

"Just so," Loki says.

Verity starts to wrap her arms around herself then drops them back to her sides, straightening her back. "You realize it's going to need to be a damn good explanation, yeah?"

Loki bristles. "It will be truthful. What you make of it is your choice."

"Truthful?" Victor says. "You should have mentioned you have a head injury."

All her friends think themselves judge and jury and it makes her want to crawl out of her skin.

"Let's not do this in the entryway," she says instead.

The explanation takes all morning.

*

"Wait," Verity says, "you're telling us you just happened to bump into a genocidal alien super-being on your way to Starbucks?"

"I was traveling between the worlds, not walking down the street," Loki retorts. "It isn't my fault the Latverian economy doesn't exactly encourage foreign investors."

*

"So if he had this mind control stick the whole time, why bother torturing you? That seems like a waste of resources."

"He would have preferred I work for him voluntarily. It would be quite a boon, having a god's loyalty."

"Lie," Verity says, at the same time Victor says

"Some men simply enjoy causing pain," and Loki briefly feels as if she's going to be sick.

*

"Were I to truly attempt to take over your realm I would be far more efficient about it," Loki says.

"Awesome," says Verity. "That’s not concerning at all."

"Please, tell us more," Victor says, opening a blank document on his tablet.

*

"I thought you dead," Victor says, evenly. "And now I wonder if that would not have been kinder."

"Yeah," says Verity.

Loki pouts. "You both thought me so easily killed?"

"Not... exactly," Verity says, carefully.

"We presumed you'd killed yourself," Victor says, something not unlike anger in his tone. Loki doesn't say anything because she's not sure what is a lie and what is truth and she doesn't particularly want to find out.

*

"Thor--" Victor says.

"No."

*

"So, does my story prove satisfactory?" Loki asks. "I'm quite done talking, so your choices are either yes or no."

"I mean, I don't love the part where we're all doomed," Verity says. "And I can already tell you don't particularly care about all the people who died in New York, but I'm guessing that's an 'Asgardian culture is kind of fucked up and nobody actually cares about mortals in another realm' thing instead of a personal moral failing. So yes, I'm satisfied that this wasn't your fault."

Loki is surprised by how relieved she feels. "And you, Victor?"

"I have no intention of sitting idly and waiting for our world to come to an end," he says, sharply. "You have enough knowledge of the titan and his army that, if the world's governments can manage to align themselves, we may stand a chance when he comes."

Loki curls herself further into the corner of her armchair. She misses the days when the Midgardians worshiped her without question. "No, thank you. I've had more than enough of him to last me a lifetime, and I have no interest in wasting my time with some sort of hilariously futile attempt at defense. Your strongest weapons will be as children's toys to him."

"I apologize if I implied you had a choice in the matter," Victor responds. It's lucky Loki is sitting down, because she feels so suddenly faint and dizzy that she surely would have fallen over if she were standing. For a moment she thinks Victor has done something to her, but she can sense nothing different, and he isn't even looking at her. This is apparently just a thing her body does now, an utterly useless defensive panic response with no warning.

She wants to tell Victor there is no way he could take any choice from her, but at this precise moment she's not certain if that's accurate. Better not to find out. She looks over to Verity, who shakes her head apologetically. "I get that it's shitty. I can't imagine what you went through. But also, literal end of the world kind of trumps anybody's personal mental health."

"I'm a terrible influence on you," Loki says, light and brittle and definitely not edging towards manic. Verity rolls her eyes.

"If you have to lie you could at least pretend to mean it."

"Convincing the rest of the world of the threat is going to be a challenge," Victor says, thoughtfully.

"Stark still owes me a drink," Loki says, fatalistically determined. "I suspect I'm going to need it."

**Author's Note:**

> I just really like the idea of MCU Loki having Midgardian friends and the Avengers being very confused by this.


End file.
